Systematics of nucleon density distributions and neutron skin of nuclei

Proton and neutron density profiles of 760 nuclei in the mass region of A = 16−304 are analyzed using the Skyrme energy density for the parameter set SLy4. Simple formulae are obtained to fit the resulting radii and diffuseness data. These formulae are useful to estimate the values of the unmeasured radii and especially in extrapolating charge radii values for nuclei which are far from the valley of stability. Also, it provides an easy way to formulate the density profile for nuclear applications and to perform analytic calculations for bound and/or scattering problems. The obtained neutron and proton root-mean-square (rms) radii and the neutron skin thicknesses are in agreement with the available experimental data and previous Hartree–Fock (HF) calculations.